


Old Bones

by non_canonical



Category: Being Human, Being Human (UK)
Genre: 15th Century, Fairy Tales, Murder, Original Character Death(s), Pre-Canon, Prostitution, Violence, Wakes & Funerals, York, six illiterate whores
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-28
Updated: 2012-12-28
Packaged: 2017-11-22 18:41:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/612987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/non_canonical/pseuds/non_canonical
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hal had six mothers, but all he wanted was one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Old Bones

**Author's Note:**

> _Being Human_ belongs to Toby Whithouse and the BBC.

The ancient past: buried beneath the strata of former lives, and best left unexcavated.  Archaeology is not an exact science, it's a question of interpretation.  Biased data, unreliable witnesses: if you want to know about history, don't ask the people who lived it.  The oldest stories are indistinguishable from myths, from fairy tales.

Once upon a time, there was a young prince – well, he was named after one, at any rate.  Born in the same year, although he didn't know it at the time.  Recording births was far from a universal practice in those days, and whores' brats were hardly the concern of the church, the aldermen, of respectable folk.

"Bastard!" they'd shout: the schoolboys with their fancy coats and the swaggering apprentice lads.  The tradesmen's sons.

Hal shrugged it off.  He had a father, a better one than theirs: a knight, at the very least, with shining armour and a big war horse.  Maybe even an earl or a baron.  York was an important town, and many rich and powerful men passed through.  One day, he'd seek his father out and claim his birthright.  His father's name.  New clothes on his back and rich food in his belly.  One day, he'd go – but for now there were floors to sweep and dishes to wash.

Besides, he didn't need a father, not when he had so many mothers.  Six of them: six watchful pairs of eyes; six pairs of hands to pick him up when he fell.  Six mothers, two rooms and two beds.  The warm comfort of bodies snug against his in the night.  Six mothers, and one of them was always there to dress him, feed him, to care for him when he was sick, even when the others were working.

Looking back, it's difficult to believe that he could have grown up in a brothel and not known the trade his mothers plied.  But they always kept him busy: hauling water from the well or running errands for Mistress Clay.  It's difficult to believe that he could have been so innocent, when the walls were thin and did little to mask the grunting and groaning, the slap of flesh against flesh.  Glimpses through door cracks: tangled cloth and grappling limbs; insistent, swollen pricks and contorted faces.  Tender violence, and sometimes not so tender: dirty hands bruised into his mothers' skin.  Of course he knew how they earned their coin.

There was nothing wrong with that.  They were businesswomen, selling a commodity that was always in demand, using the system that left them dependent on men – whores or servants or wives.  That's what modern historians say, and why shouldn't he choose to believe them? Empowered women, subverting the patriarchy.  No cause to feel angry, to feel guilty.  It wasn't his fault that he couldn't support them, that they couldn't stop.  It wasn't his fault that Alice was knifed in an argument over two silver pennies.  Alice, who had the sweetest voice, who'd sing him to sleep.  A sweet voice, but a sharp tongue: she must have argued, must have answered back.

And that was the way things were in those days: people died badly and died young.  It was nothing out of the ordinary, no reason for tears.  Anyway, he was the man of the house – no matter that he was just a boy in terms of years – and a man mustn't cry.  And even if he had, even if he'd cried himself to sleep, no one could have blamed him.  Not when he'd lost – well, he didn't know what he'd lost, and for the first time he'd realised that Alice might have been his mother.  And that she might not.  That only one of the six could have carried him in her womb and pushed him out into the world.  That only one of them had the same blood flowing in her veins.  But not Alice, surely not her.  One of the others would have spoken: the dead have no need of secrets.

Good times: endless summer evenings, gathering rushes in the meadow.  Golden twilight.  Jane holding out a dandelion head: make a wish.  If wishing had the power to change anything, they'd have long since been out of that place, but Jane was waiting so he blew.  They chased after the seeds as they drifted away on the breeze.  A dark, still pool under the willow tree: he peered down at his features.  And at Jane's, where they wavered next to his.  Her blind eye, dulled and white, the other cornflower blue and nothing like his – but maybe he had his father's eyes.

Bad times.  Long winter darkness with the wind rattling the shutters at the window, and the draught trickling through the floorboards, whispering in the carpet of rushes – and not just the draught, either.  The rats didn't like the cold any more than he did.  The women gathered around the fire, blowing life back into white finger ends, busy with their spindles and their needles.  Hal was small for his age, but he could have wished himself smaller: the constant struggle to let out the seams of his clothes a little farther, always just a little farther and never quite far enough.

The worst times: too much work, or not enough.  Exhausted bodies; rumbling stomachs.  His mothers walking the streets, the taverns, even the docks where the men spoke English strangely or not at all – but theirs was not a profession that required words.  Hal would run through the streets where the bakers' ovens smoked, or skid along the blood-slick butcher's row.  Home again, with a loaf or pie cradled under his arm, or with a fresh welt and a ready excuse.  Home, to find Jane crumpled on the floor, already growing cold, the back of her head as red and pulpy as an overripe plum.  Home too late, and it was already over.  There was nothing Hal could have done.  It wasn't as though he'd been there, cowering in a closet, in the stifling dark.  Listening to the crack of knuckle on bone, to the soggy thump of a fist into her belly.  Choking on his fear and screaming, screaming for it to stop – but only inside his head.

A second mound of unconsecrated earth beyond the churchyard wall.  Heavy silence, and Hal waited for one of the others to break it, one of the four who were left.  She must be one of them – his mother, his real mother – even if she wasn't yet ready to talk.  And there must have been a reason for her silence, because he was as good a son as any mother could ask for – tried to be, at least – and she would tell him when the time was right.  He was sure of that.

Life went on.  There was bread to buy, and piss pots to empty.  Little domestic dramas: a lost woollen cap, a squabble over a pewter dish.  Rebecca, sick with the pox, and Hannah and he took turns to nurse her through the worst of it.  And Mistress Clay was always wanting something: clothes to be mended, and laundry to be done.  Women's work.

"Kiss my blindcheeks," he'd yell, but she tanned them for him instead.

Life went on in an endless procession of feet on the stairs.  Apprentices, sailors, even the priest who'd denied Alice and Jane a Christian burial, the dirty old hypocrite.  Different trades, different clothes but, underneath, the same eager pricks.  The same grunting and sweating, and coins thrown onto the table.  The same downturned mouths and weary faces.  There were always men in the house.

In the dark corner where they stacked the firewood: a looming presence, blocking Hal's escape.  Immovable bulk.  Soft, plump hands clutching, insistent: on his shoulder, his hip, inside his hose.  Hot hands on his squirming flesh.  Sour breath.

"You're all for sale.  What's your price?"

Hal shoved and he yelled.  And there was Mistress Clay, wielding a broom, and she'd have none of that in her house – no, not even if he had gold in his purse – and he ought to be grateful that she didn't denounce him as a sodomite.

No.  That's not the way it was: Hal didn't need rescuing.  He wriggled out of those fat, sweating hands, quick and elusive as an eel, and he was off – running, running so quickly that no one would ever catch him.

But then he'd have to keep running, couldn't allow himself ever to stop, to look back – and that wasn't the way it went, either.  Hal didn't run: he stayed and fought.  Hit the man right in his bloated belly, because he was able to take care of himself.  He should have been able to take care of himself.  Maybe if he'd been bigger, stronger –

"I never forget anything," he tells Annie.  But it doesn't mean he always chooses to remember.

Life went on, as it had to do.  They still huddled together at night, but it was just the five of them now.  Just Hal and Meg sharing one bed: more room that he'd had before, but it wasn't enough, wasn't ever enough.  No space, no air, and he couldn't breathe, not with another body pressing against him, pinning him, crushing into him, hot breath on the back of his neck – and wouldn't the night ever end?

Maud was Hal's mother.  Not that she told him, of course, but he could tell, he knew.  She'd never been his favourite: too cold, too distant.  He'd always been a little scared of her, but how he coveted that hardness, now he wanted that coldness to be a part of him.  Maud never cried.

When the river flooded, Maud told him stories about Jenny Greenteeth, who dragged unwary travellers to a watery death.  Jenny swam through his nightmares, with her larder of horrible, struggling meat and her withered hag's body, clutching at him with plump, sweating hands.  Mouldy, broken teeth sinking into his flesh, piercing, invading, lodging deep, deep inside.  Jenny Greenteeth; ogres who devoured little children; monstrous black dogs that howled in the darkness.  Imaginary horrors to chase away the real ones.

The sweating sickness: Maud battled grimly, tended only by Hannah.  Kind, sweet, patient Hannah, but she too fell ill.  So Hal took her place in that room of gasping breaths and foetid air.  He took her place because he cared, because he loved them, because it was the right thing to do.  Because he was more afraid of losing them, of losing the truth, than he was of the disease.  The sweating sickness: the swiftest of killers.  Little more than a day, and he came back out of that dark place alone.  Two more of them gone quietly to the grave.  Two more who refused to speak, to claim him, but he wasn't angry with them.  One of the others would tell him: Meg or Rebecca, the only ones left now, and he'd be a better son to them.  Maybe then they'd want him.

Finally, Hal began to grow.  Arms and legs outpacing their skill with a needle and thread.  His face hardening beneath the downy hair, as the bones pushed their way through the fat.  Other changes, too: an itch to scratch, and this one had nothing to do with the fleas.  Other dreams disturbed his sleep and left him sticky and embarrassed.  Unable to control himself, no better than all those other men.  But it was just the three of them now, and he endured his shame alone.  Not quite alone: furtive assignations with the brewer's daughter, in the storeroom, hidden behind the barrels.  Rising anticipation – until she touched him, hot hands on his trembling skin, and he couldn't do it, couldn't stand it, couldn't bear anyone's touch except his own.

There was a carpenter who was sweet on Rebecca.  One of her regulars, who'd visit as often as work and money – and his wife – would allow.  He offered to take Hal on as his apprentice.  A respectable profession.

Mistress Clay knew a butcher, an old man without a son, and he agreed to teach Hal his trade.  Dirty work, but the sort of dirt that only clung to the outside, the sort that could be washed away.

Hal spent years learning to saw and plane, to cut the timber and assemble the pieces.  Rough benches, then chairs and tables, and cabinet work with the finest woods.

Hal spent his days ankle deep in blood and offal, wringing the necks of chickens, of geese.  Cutting the throats of lambs and calves.  Skinning and gutting, and taking the beasts apart, cut by cut, joint by joint.

Chisels, saws and augers; meat hooks and cleavers.

The tools of his trade: butter; lard; anything thick and slick and greasy.

Hal earned an honest living.  He never sold himself, not even when Meg fell sick and couldn't work.  When the fire went out for lack of fuel and he'd wake in the morning to find the piss frozen in the pot.  When Meg took to her bed, sweating and shaking, and they had to cut off all her beautiful chestnut curls.  Hal never sold himself.  He wouldn't.  Even though they were hungry and his body was the only thing he had to sell.

"Once a whore, always a whore, eh Harry?" Edgar Wyndham: sneering face, but the same eager hands.

Food on the table; a fire in the hearth.  Money enough for the apothecary and his medicines – but they didn't do any good and Hal may as well have saved his money, saved himself the pains of earning it.  Meg left him, left him full of tears that just wouldn't come.  Meg left him, but he still had Rebecca, and she'd been his favourite all along – of course she had.

Rebecca: he would be a good son to her.  Was a good son to her: screams and the familiar sound of fist striking bone, and this time Hal was big enough and strong enough.  This time he fought and he won, and a few cuts and bruises were a small price to pay.  This time he saved her, and if it wasn't quite enough to make her tell him, to make her claim him, then she held him close and wept, and laughed, and that was good enough.

Hal wore his new scar proudly to the Lammas Fair.  A woman on each arm: Rebecca and Isabella, the new girl that Mistress Clay had lured away from a servant's life.  A generous smile and unblemished skin: she was still young.  The Lammas Fair: tumblers and jugglers; singing birds in cages.  A rainbow of fabrics.  Roasted pork and baskets of cherries; Isabella's juicy red lips.  Strong Rhenish wine – maybe too much of it, singing in his veins and warming his insides.  Rebecca was laughing, and Isabella was dancing to the music, ripe flesh jigging up and down.  Isabella was smiling, smiling at him, and he smiled back.

Back at the house: he had a room to himself now.  Soft, smooth flesh, and hot hands on his body, making him shudder, an instinctive recoil, but there was a stronger urge, driving him on.  Her hands.  Her mouth, her sweet, stained mouth whispering filthy, delicious things.  Making him burn, making him want.  Hesitation underneath the blanket, but Isabella coaxed him, insistent – because she liked him, because she wanted him.  A gift, not a purchase, because he wasn't like those other men, the ones who bought their pleasure no matter what the cost.

And if his purse was that much lighter the next day, then he must have spent his money at the fair.  On treats for Rebecca, who was looking tired, looking old, the gold of her hair fading to straw.  Rebecca, who shrank even as her belly swelled.  Shrank until he could see the bones – so like the structure of his own face – peering through the skin.  She was the one: he knew it.  She'd been waiting for this – this brother or sister – and now she would tell him.  Now they would be a family.

Whores and bawds instead of midwives, but they knew their work well enough.  They had plenty of practice.  Banished to the landing, listening to the cries: hoarse agony of the mother and the wailing of the baby – the wailing that never came.  Butcher's shop reek.  Shock of blood on the sheets, on the thing they bundled out of his sight.  Hal sat with Rebecca at the end, but all she would say was his name.  Over and over, and he had no idea if it was a confession or simple thanks.  Over and over, fading to a whisper – bending closer, until her lips brushed his ear – and the whispers turned to panting breaths.  Then the breaths stopped and she was gone.  They were all gone.

White.  White linen to wrap her in: dazzling purity in the sunshine.  White snow, flakes of it falling on the winding sheet.  Snow, in the middle of summer; lime, burning the skin exposed by the holes in the soiled blanket.  Lime to remove all trace of her that much faster.  One last mound of earth, this one inside the churchyard.  She'd embraced the true faith in the end: one last whore's bargain, although he shouldn't begrudge her that.  Maybe she was in heaven, after all.  Maybe she was with the others, a sisterhood united in death.  A conspiracy of silence.  But he didn't resent that, wasn't angry about it.  He was sure she had her reasons, that they had all had their reasons – that, whatever it might have been, it wasn't that they didn't love him.  Didn't love him enough.  Didn't want him.

Later, much later – a lifetime and a death away – he'd sometimes catch a gleam of sun on golden hair, or a chestnut curl.  He'd sometimes see a particular expression on a face: the hair changed, and the clothes, the manners, the century, but that look remained the same: desperation; resignation.  Hal knew that look, knew how it sat on his own features.  And when he saw that hair, that face, it woke a hunger in him that no amount of blood could ever appease.  He kept them alive the longest; he made them suffer the most.

Hal turned his back on the grave, on the graveyard, on the church.  He walked away, and then –

Then they all lived happily ever after.  Except that's not how things really end, not in the oldest fairy stories, the ones that carry the weight of truth.  The Victorians tried to sanitise them, to reduce them to romances: the hero winning the hand of the beautiful maiden.  Those are the things they talk about: the happy ending, the prize, the slaying of the dragon.  They never mention that the hero's hands are stained with blood.

Hal was far too old for fairy tales.  He was writing his own story now, on blank, empty pages.  Like many heroes, he earned himself a new name: Henry of York.  And that's the thing about that kind of name: it doesn't tell you where a man is now, it tells you where he's from.  They name you for your home, but only after you've left it.  And that's what he did: he left it far behind, but that wasn't the end of the story.  It was just the beginning of a new chapter.

Once upon a time ...  
 


End file.
